We spoke to Dan Hardcastle about his decision to upload his 21-episode Planet Coaster playthrough in one day.
Dan Hardcastle drew attention on 11 November by releasing all 21 much-requested sequel episodes of his Planet Coaster series simultaneously on his channel, NerdCubed.
The new uploads run for over 15.5 hours in total. The bulk release, which is reminiscent of how TV shows are often added to major streaming sites, is a significant departure from the staggered schedules favoured by many YouTubers and used on Dan’s channel in the past.
Asked what brought on the idea of a Netflix-style approach to releasing the series, Dan says he “just wanted to see if it could be done!
“At the moment I’m experimenting with YouTube, trying to release something new and/or weird once a week, and I hit a small snag,” he goes on to explain. “A second series of Planet Coaster is easily the request I receive the most, after ‘get down from there’ and ‘give me back my dog’, but I didn’t quite know how to put a twist on it. The solution I came up with was to make it like I would a daily series, but just throw all 15.5 hours of it up at the same time.”
It's doing well @DanNerdCubed pic.twitter.com/8XE8IiiFVw
— Matt Collins (@Mattophobia) November 12, 2017
Commentators have had mixed opinions about the experiment, and Dan himself anticipated that some people would unsubscribe from his channel as a result. He confirms that he lost around 7,000 subscribers in two days, but still remains positive, saying: “Most people who left were likely just inactive subscribers who noticed me again.
“A thing I didn’t expect, though, was that people who hadn’t watched me for a while took notice and have come back into the fold. We’ve even had a small increase in people watching older videos. Taking up 21 slots in someone’s subscription box will get you noticed!”
At the moment, view counts for videos in the series are highest on the early episodes, which easily break 100,000 views, while later episodes struggle to hit 10,000, but Dan says it’s too soon to assess the overall success of his experiment.
“I’m going to give this series a couple of weeks and then pore over the analytics,” says Dan. “Even a few days after release, like now, I still don’t know what to make of it. Lots of people are using the like and dislike buttons to speak about how they enjoyed this release method more than anything right now, but that should settle over time.”
Want more?
Read our event recap from HelloWorld, or read about how YouTube is restricting “creepy” videos aimed at children.
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